The OTHER Jesus
Dave Campbell
THE OTHER JESUS, explores the myths and misconceptions of God's personality.

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book excerpt

Destination requires a location! Why? Because you can’t go anywhere until you first know where you are! Let’s say you are traveling and get lost; even with a map, you need to know your current location so you can find the way to your destination. In a similar way, when your goal is an emotional or a spiritual place, you need to know where you are before you can hope to reach that goal. .... One Sunday, I asked my congregation this question: Is it possible for a person to be loved deeply and still feel unloved? The unanimous response was, yes! I’ve noticed that human relationships seem to break up because people feel unloved. They may, indeed, be very deeply loved, but for some reason, they don’t feel it. Your relationship with God is set on a similarly fragile footing and that means God has this paradox: No matter how much He loves you and pours Himself into your life, you can still feel unloved and you can even feel abused! But, what is the real truth? Romans 8:32 says this: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Here is the most critical fact for you to know: God cannot show you more love than He already has. As an adult, you need to unlearn what this sinful world has made you believe and allow God’s true character to seep down deep into your soul. God is Love. Jesus loved us so much that He died and became sin for us, so we could become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). That is a deep and persistent love! ..... I think you will agree that it’s difficult to live in America and not see a movie or multimedia presentation about Jesus. Most people have seen a large number of plays, skits, movies and television shows about Him. Now you might find the following statement an odd line of reasoning but consider this: Jesus is alive and well but He has never been an actor in any of those movies or plays. In fact, it is doubtful that a Hollywood director would even consider our Lord for a part in a movie, especially for a role where He plays himself. This should bring you to the following reality: Through your whole life, everything you have seen and heard in any media has been man’s interpretation of who Jesus is and how he talks. There are no vocal recordings, no video, not even a snapshot of Him, yet you have repeatedly seen and hear a pseudo-realistic presentations of “Jesus”. Bible stories jump to life with booming music and larger-than-life characters played against vivid and real-looking backgrounds. All these help you believe that Bible stories took place in a specific Hollywood fashion and that Jesus himself has a personality carefully fabricated by a director’s whim. The backgrounds are more spectacular and colorful than what is historically accurate and Jesus is usually taller and better looking than the other actors. Perhaps the backgrounds are not that important, but concerning our savior, the Bible says nothing about Him being physically outstanding. There are certainly no scriptures suggesting He was taller than an average man and if Hollywood tried to be “period specific”, they would need to choose an actor who was much shorter than the average American male. They also would need to choose an actor that was very average looking, because the prophet Isaiah says “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2 – KJV). In some movies I have seen the actor, who plays “Jesus”, frequently shouting while in other movies He is consistently played as a mild-mannered man who whispers everything. You and I know these actors are not the real Jesus, but over time, we still form opinions about the Son of God based on video productions, rather than on the Bible and Spirit-born revelation. Someone once said, “If you laid all the statisticians in the world end to end (pause here) … that would be a good thing!” Now you might get a chuckle out of that, but ask yourself this question: What about book authors and script writers (yes, including me)? If someone laid THEM end to end, they would also go a LONG ways (giggles allowed here). The point here is this: There are a large number of writers in the world and that includes authors of Christian books, both fictional and non-fictional. Now consider how many people have read books about Jesus and how many people have shared what they read with other people! You can easily see the multiplying effect of a writer’s opinion on our perception of God. Each writer has his own concept of Jesus and he can influence a vast number of people (for good or evil).